Much of the debate over modern surveillance—including the NSA mass spying controversy—has centered around whether people can reasonably expect that records about their telephone and Internet activity can remain private when those records belong to someone else: the service providers. Courts havedisagreed on whether the 1979 Supreme Court case Smith v. Maryland, which ruled people have no expectation of privacy in the phone numbers they dial, should be extended to cover newer, more invasive forms of technology.

As the year draws to a close, EFF is looking back at the major trends influencing digital rights in 2013 and discussing where we are in the fight for free expression, innovation, fair use, and privacy. Click here to read other blog posts in this series.

The historicdecision handed down by D.C. federal judge Richard Leon last week that found the NSA's bulk collection of phone records likely violated the Fourth Amendment is a crucial first step towards protecting digital privacy from suspicionless government searches. But the importance of the decision extends beyond the NSA's surveillance programs. Judge Leon made two important findings on how the Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches should apply at a time when technology can make invasive surveillance -- once considered the stuff of science fiction -- a part of every day life.

Update 2013-12-13: it turns out this feature was removed in the recent Android 4.4.2 release :(. You can still get it if you install cyanogenmod or if you have a rooted device, but mainstream Android users are out of luck.

To date, there has been no way to run apps on Android with real and reliable privacy controls. Android version 4.3 and higher take a huge step in the right direction, letting users install apps while denying some of the apps' attempts to collect the user's data.